On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,A partridge in a pear tree - this being the first "window" in my 7Gypsies printers tray that I purchased whilst at the retreat in November. I have been longing to get one of these trays for sometime, but knew if I purchased it before I had an idea what I might do with it, then it would sit unattended in my craft room gathering dust. Rest assured after some contemplating I settled on the idea of making a 12 days of Christmas display for our home. I spent an hour or so on the internet doing image searches for each of the days to get some inspiration which I then sketched down roughly, gathered some supplies and started to create. Because the tray comes with 12 equal sized windows I first made a template to make sure I knew what each card needed to measure. These I searched through my stamp collection to see what I already had that could be used to interpret each day. The little partridge on my tree here for day one is part of a PaperArtsy Stamp from a few seasons ago, stamped, cut out and raised on a foam pad. The background is a card cut from the card sheet of patterned paper from Fancy Pants Hot Chocolate collection to which I added Frayed Burlap distress stickles to the trunk. My favourite element is the pears which are clear chandelier drops with dark brown alcohol ink dropped on, which I then adhered with a clear drying wet adhesive. I added a small Crushed Olive distress stickles stems to complete them before inking the edge of the entire card in charcoal ink to blend it into the wooden printers tray frame.
My two turtle doves window features paper from the Graphic 45 Christmas past collection and two doves with prima flower wings and a Tim Holtz tissue tape border. My three french hens are having a ball climbing my stamped Eiffel Tower, and the bells decorating this card are also from the same Graphic 45 collection. Using elements from the same collections throughout my tray has helped keep a coordinated feel to it, but I have still managed to vary my products used. My 4 calling birds card mixes the Fancy Pants Hot Chocolate paper with Graphic 45, which is adorned with a couple of stamped images and some more stickles. The Thicker numbers used throughout my project can be found here in the shop, and have to be my all time favourite thickers! I've used them so much!Final card being shared for today is for the 5th day of Christmas - my five gold rings card which also featured on the ChickenSoup blog last weekend as part of their 12 days of Christmas inspiration. The rings are small washers which I added alcohol ink to and then stickles over the top with Tarnished Brass. The background paper is again Graphic 45 but I picked out the berries and added tiny dots of stickles to those, stamped a wreath and added a couple of punched out holly leaves (also distress stickled) and some red gem berries.
